Winter May Never Die
by Natalie Redwood
Summary: This is a fanfiction about what happens to Sansa and Theon/Reek after they escape Winterfell. Please note that this is based on the TV Series, NOT the books.
1. Chapter 1

The sixty-foot leap into the snow was not beautiful, or liberating, as Sansa might have thought on any other occasion. No, it was probably one of the most terrifying things she had ever done. She felt herself, plummeting weightless in the air, to what could be her imminent death if the snow wasn't deep enough. As they fell, time seemed to slow down. Was it really only a few seconds she was falling? It felt like an hour to her. She gripped Reek's (Theon's?) hand harder.

At last, she felt the impact: They landed facefirst and sank about ten feet into the soft snow.

Slowly, they both rose. Sansa brushed the snow off her wet face and lowered her hood onto her head again.

"We need to hurry," said Reek, shakily. He grabbed Sansa's hand and pulled her up. With difficulty, they climbed out out of the ten-foot pit they had created. Sansa saw that to their right, the snow became more shallow and treadable. Further off, there was a forest.

Not daring to look back, they headed to the right, trudging knee-high through the deep snow as quickly as they could, still grasping each other's hands for life. After ten minutes or so, the snow was just a few inches deep again, and they ran again. Reek was pulling her into the forest. As they sprinted, Sansa saw that this forest curved to the left, branching into the larger one where the Bolton and Baratheon armies had fought. But she had no time to think about what dangers might arise from that.

They reached the forest. Sansa crouched behind a large pine tree at the edge of the dark, shadowy forest, panting from exhaustion and adrenaline. Reek stood behind another tree, peering from behind it at Winterfell. Slowly, dreadfully, she looked, too.

It seemed that no search was being made right now. Sansa could her cheerful hoots coming from the kingdom: victory cries. There was also a great deal of smoke coming from behind the walls, and she knew that the Bolton banners must be burning. Perhaps Ramsay had been too caught up in his victory to remember to catch up on his wife. But he would find out any minute now that she had left. She felt a hand grab her arm. Panicked, she looked up, expecting to see Ramsay, but it was only Reek. "We should get as f-far away as we can," he said. As always, his eyes were fixed on the ground, and he trembled. "They'll b-be coming soon."

They ran silently through the forest, away from the castle and in in the direction of where the battle had taken place. The forest was deep and thick with trees, yet it had a certain comfort to it. That comfort, Sansa thought dully, was probably that it was not Winterfell. Still, even now, Sansa had to admire the pine trees that stood hundreds of feet tall and noble as they had done for hundreds of years.

After about half an hour or so, Sansa heard noises coming from Winterfell- and this time, they were not delightful. Sansa and Reek froze in their tracks. There was a horn blowing and shouting. Sansa strained her ears and heard that it was Ramsay:

"My wife, Sansa Stark, has run away with my servant! I will be leading a small army to retrieve her. The first man to find her will be rewarded. Any person who tries to help them escape will be flayed alive. " Commotion and chatter ensued this announcement, as army men prepared for their new mission and townspeople chattered nervously among themselves.

Sansa and Reek looked at each other. "Where do we go?" Sansa panted.

Reek pulled her arm in answer, and they continued running, this time to the right, away from the larger forest where the armies had fought, and deeper into the smaller forest they were already in. Sansa knew why: Ramsay's army would first be checking the battle site.

They ran for what felt like hours, stumbling over knotted, twisted tree roots and slipping slightly on the occasional ice patches, and then finally stopped. Night was falling. The sky was dark blue. Behind them, perhaps a few miles away, there were shouts, and Sansa knew it was Ramsay's army.

Sansa listened harder. She heard something about not finding anything, about perhaps trying the King's Road. Then she heard Ramsay's sharp voice: "We already have men on the King's Road! We'll keep searching here. If anything, we can take some supplies from this lot." Sansa took "this lot" to mean the dead Baratheon army.

More disagreement, and Ramsay's voice again. "The stretch of woods towards the castle?" More talking. "Good idea. Let's go!"

Sansa froze in horror. Reek tapped her shoulder, and Sansa turned around. "We have to hide there" he said, tremulously pointing at something in the side of a cliff up ahead. Sansa squinted and saw that it was a hole in the cliffside: The cave. She would not have known it was a cave if she hadn't known that Arya and Bran used to play in there: It was inconspicuous, just a hole in the cliffside. They rushed to the cave. The entrance was mostly filled with rocks, except for a small gap where they could squeeze through. Sansa went in head-first, then Reek.

The cave was about half the size of Sansa's bedroom at Winterfell: Small, but enough room to stand and walk around. They sat together in the darkness of the cave, shivering with fear like children.

After a while, when the sky was pitch black, they heard the sound of footsteps and shouts nearby. The orange light of the torches illuminated the cave. Sansa and Reek froze completely still.

"I'll search here!" someone shouted. Sansa's heart skipped a beat and she thought she might faint.

The voice came from right outside of the cave entrance.

She dared not turn her head to see Reek's expression, though she knew it must be something similar to hers.

The two hardly dared to breathe as they silently prayed to the gods. Then-

"Nothing here!"

Sansa almost sighed with relief, then caught herself.

"They've got to be somewhere; they can't have gone far!" Ramsay shouted. He sounded angry now. Sansa had rarely heard him angry; he usually was cheerfully sadistic. After a few more minutes of searching the area, the army left to search somewhere else, muttering frustratedly.

Sansa sat huddled, shocked and relieved at the same time, as though she had just surfaced from an icy cold ocean.

Speaking of icy cold, she was freezing. She was still wet from the snow she had fallen in from that jump. She removed her long cloak, which was also wet, knowing too well of the tales of frostbite here in the North. She saw that goosebumps covered her arms, and she crossed her arms and huddled into a fetal position, shivering. Her teeth chattered, and her breath billowed out in front of her like smoke, as it always did in the North. She had no blanket. She was hungry, too, and they had no food. She was thirsty, but she dared not step outside the cave to eat snow.

It was going to be a long night, Sansa thought, as she slumped down onto the cold stone floor and tried to fall asleep. A few feet away from her, Reek was trying to do the same.


	2. Chapter 2

Sansa knew that she must have somehow managed to fallen asleep, for when her eyes opened again, the light inside the cave was red from the early rising sun. She lay awake for a while, trying to discern the sounds of a search party. There were none. They must have returned to Winterfell, she thought, but they'll be back soon.

Sansa sat up and felt something heavy slide down her body a bit. She looked down and saw Theon's long black cloak had been put ne her like a blanket. She looked to her right. Theon was still asleep, huddled and shivering, without his coat on. Even though he wore a dirty, grey tattered shirt, Sansa could see that he looked well underfed: he looked much smaller than he once had, and his ribs protruded.

"Wake up," said Sansa. Theon's eyes popped open immediately and alertly. He sat up, still shivering, and faced Sansa's direction, his eyes staring at the ground below her.

"We need to get moving," said Sansa. "Before they start searching again."

Theon nodded. Sansa silently handed Theon's coat back to him, slipped on her own cloak (which was dryer, but still damp), and they crawled out of the cave into the forest.

They walked silently, side-by-side, away from Winterfell, towards the North. After a while, Theon asked nervously, "Where are we going?"

Sansa stopped walking. She hadn't exactly thought of that. All she knew was that she wanted to get away from Winterfell. The Vale? Highly improbable. Without horses, it would take them several months. Castle Black? No. Winter was coming very soon, or so everyone had said at Winterfell.

"Away," said Sansa. "We'll find a place somewhere."

Sansa knew it was a weak statement, but Theon did not argue, so they kept walking towards the direction of the woods where the armies had fought.

The light in the sky was now a golden yellow. It shone through the green pine trees, making the trees look as if they grew bright emeralds. The patches of snow on the dirt forest floor glowed gold. Sansa and Theon could smell the warm, homely smell of the earth floor and the pine needles and cones that had fallen hither and thither. Sansa brushed her fingers past the sentinels as she walked, feeling the rough, scaly, yet comforting texture of their trunks. The forest was completely silent except for the footsteps of the two traveling companions.

"Theon," said Sansa after a while.

Theon stopped walking. She knew that he was unused to being called by his real name. He did not protest her using this name, though. He faced her, but looked down. Sansa also stopped walking.

"Why did you give me your coat last night?" Sansa asked.

"You were shivering," said Theon, his eyes still fixed on the ground, his lip quavering.

"That was very kind of you," said Sansa. "Thank you."

Theon did not answer, but continued to walk. Sansa walked alongside him.

When the sky was finally the turquoise color of a sunny day, Sansa smelled something awful. She remembered once, when she was a small child, smelling that horrible scent. Eventually, a servant had found a dead rat underneath her bed. This smell was like that, but a thousand times more powerful. Sansa pulled her cloak over face and saw what was making the smell: The dead bodies of the armies.

Sansa stopped, but Theon kept walking towards the bodies.

"Theon, what are you doing?" she cried.

Theon turned his head back a little and said, "Stay there."

Sansa waited, still trying to block the stench of bodies with her cloak, watching Theon walk around and stop at certain bodies. After a few minutes, he returned.

Silently, Theon handed her a silver dagger. She saw Theon had a sword tucked into a sheath on his hip. He was also holding two flint stones for making fires, and a small burlap bag of something. Theon reached inside of it and handed her a few pieces of dried meat and nuts.

Sansa had forgotten how ravenously hungry she was. But she could not stand to eat here, not with the smell of decaying people filling the air. She held the food in her left hand, her dagger in her right, and said, "Let's keep moving." Theon tucked the bag and the flint into an inner pocket of his cloak.

They walked again, the corpses laying to their left. Sansa tried not to look at their dead bodies. She did not want to see the empty shells of fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, friends to people alive and soon to be mourning, once they heard the news. But it was hard. She occasionally caught a glimpse of a slit throat, or a spear in a stomach, and she quickly looked away.

She had seen her own father beheaded once. She did not need to see any more than that.

Silently, they kept walking through the forest. They kept walking and walking all day, not saying a word to each other unless absolutely necessary. When night had fallen, they set up camp. Sansa gathered wood to start a fire, and Theon started it with the flint. Earlier in the day, Theon had thrown Sansa's dagger at a rabbit, and he skinned, gutted, and set the meat up to roast above the fire. By the time they had done this, the sky was black, and the full moon and stars shone brightly above them.

They sat around the fire, staring at it, feeling its warmth. After a while, Sansa decided to break the ice.

"Theon... What happened after I left Winterfell?"

Theon did not speak. He simply stared at the fire.

"Theon," repeated Sansa sharply.

Theon's voice came out quietly and tremulously, as he stared at the fire.

"I- I can't..."

"Theon!"

He shuddered and swallowed, then began to speak in a hollow voice.

"Your brother... R-Robb..." Theon looked as though he was fighting back tears saying the name, yet his voice was completely hollow. "He told me to go to my father and make a deal. My father would be declared King of the Iron Islands if he were to help Robb fight. So I went.

"When I went, nobody knew or cared who I was. I finally came to my father for the offer. He didn't even care that I had returned- his only living son. My father refused the offer. He called me weak. I... I let it get to me." He sounded bitter now. "I was angry because I had no family who liked or cared about me. So I abandoned my alliance with Winterfell and started fighting for my family of the Iron Islands."

"What about your other family?" said Sansa. "What about us?"

"I-" Theon said, then broke off.

"You what?" Sansa said coldly.

"I didn't... At the time... You didn't seem much like a family." said Theon, his voice shaking terribly now.

"What do you mean, we didn't seem like much of a family?" said Sansa. She was angry now, at this man- no, not a man. Less than a man. A traitorous piece of scum. "We never mistreated you, not once! You were allowed in the castle, you had a bed, you sat with us at mealtimes, you learned how to fight and ride horses with us-"

"But I was never welcome!" retorted Theon, his voice raised a little now, for the first time since their escape. "I never had any f-friends or family in Winterfell, except for Robb. I was the son of the traitor. A p-pampered prisoner. Everybody in Winterfell looked down on me, laughed at me in scorn. I was the lowly servant of the Starks to people, nothing more. A prisoner of war, a son of the man they had hated for daring to fight for his own freedom.

"And yet they loved to remind me how g-grateful I had to be, that the Starks had chosen to put up with me when they could have killed me. When the time came to choose between my captors who had treated me unkindly but d-decently, and my own family by blood who didn't care about me, I chose the latter."

Theon took a deep breath. "It was stupid. A terrible mistake. My f-family had sent me away. Why should I have tried to impress them? Still... I was tired of being nothing. I wanted a real family."

Sansa stared at Theon without saying a word. She had known Theon since she was born. So why did Theon's words seem to have a ring of truth to them? She thought she had known him well. But now that Sansa thought about it, she realized that she seldom even spoke to him, and she knew him nowhere near as well as her other siblings. She remembered the slight, yet present tension that seemed to fill the air whenever Theon entered the room.

"So all this time, you've hated us," said Sansa, trying to remain emotionless. She did not want to sympathize with this traitor.

"I didn't hate any of the Starks!" said Theon. Sansa could see the tears streaking down his dirty, hollow cheeks in the orange glow of the fire. "No, I didn't," he added, at Sansa's coldly skeptical expression. "They were the closest thing to a family I had. They didn't treat me much like a family, but... I loved them anyway. I wanted to be a part of their family. Even if they didn't want me."

For the first time since she had met Theon when she had returned, she felt a rush of pity for him. She had thought she had known this man, but here was a sudden flow of information she had never heard before.

But Sansa could not let Theon know that. She wanted to hate him, for betraying her family. Sansa regained her composure and said indifferently, "So what happened after you decided to betray us?"

Theon swallowed, then spoke again in that same hollow voice. "My father decided that he wanted to take over the North. He told me to raid some fishing villages. I got mad. I was his only living son, and this was all he was letting me do. I was tired of being seen as useless by everybody. So I... I got over my head. I took over Winterfell instead.

"Nobody respected me. Of course they wouldn't; I had earned all the d-disrespect in the world. I betrayed the Starks. Then Rodrik spat in my face. And I didn't want to do it, but I was told I had to do it, to make them fear me, so I..." His voice trembled violently now, "I c-cut his head off." His eyes were very red now, and the tears seemed to be flowing out of his eyes even faster.

Sansa's anger returned. "You killed Rodrik just for spitting in your face? I knew Rodrik! You knew him! How could you do that?"

"I was stupid," said Theon, staring into the fire, sniffling. I did terrible things. I deserve everything that's happened to me."

He continued his tale. "I ordered- I ordered Bran and Rickon to be killed." Sansa could tell he was holding back sobs. He gasped a little and continued. "They escaped. When I found out they were gone, I- 1 went to a farm and killed two boys." Theon's voice cracked, and this time, finally, the sobs came out, hard. "They were just two innocent farm boys, no older than Bran and Rickon. It was horrible. I murdered children." He paused for a minute, crying hard, letting the tears flow relentlessly down his face, streaking the dirt on his face. He buried his face in his arms and huddled up.

Sansa didn't want to feel sorry for the man in front of her, the one who had killed Rodrik and ordered her brothers dead. Yet somewhere in the pit of her stomach, there was a strong sense of pity that she tried to fight.

At last, Theon spoke again. "I burned the bodies so no one would know I hadn't found them. I didn't want people to know I was weak. But not long after, the Boltons took over.

"I was kidnapped and tortured. I thought it would never end, until I was saved. I thought I was finally free. But I started to feel terrible for all that I had done. I still do."

"But I thought you were a servant to Ramsay," interjected Sansa, feeling a little confused.

Theon continued as though he had not heard her. "My savior... He was Ramsay. He took me to another torture chamber. And he-"

But Theon did not finish. He just stared into the fire, silently crying.

"Theon," said Sansa plainly, when he had not spoken for a while. "What did he do?"

"Everything I deserved," said Theon.

"Theon, what exactly-"

But Sansa saw the expression on his face, and she did not finish her sentence. Instead, she sat staring into the fire, thinking hard.

"So now I know exactly what you did," said Sansa, glaring at the fire, fingering the dagger on the ground at her side, the anger returning to her. "You killed Rodrik, and you would have killed my brothers. Why should I feel sorry for you?"

Theon didn't look at Sansa, either. He said nothing for a while, then slowly said said, "...You shouldn't."

Sansa lifted the dagger. Theon watched it nervously.

"I should kill you," Sansa said quietly.

The forest was dead silent except for the crackling of the fire. Theon swallowed and looked, for the first time, directly into Sansa's eyes.

Sansa stood up and walked around the fire. Theon did not move. Sansa held the dagger to Theon's throat.

"You betrayed Robb, your own brother. You killed Rodrik. You tried to kill my brothers and instead murdered two innocent children just to make yourself look good," she said even quieter, deadlier, almost a whisper. "I should kill you," she repeated.

Theon did not say anything. He simply sat there, paralyzed. Sansa and Theon stayed there, completely frozen.

Clunk.

The dagger slipped out of Sansa'a shaking hand and fell to the ground. She slumped down to the ground next to Theon. Theon remained frozen.

"I can't do it," whispered Sansa, shaking, and picking up her dagger again. She could no longer hide the fact that she did not hate Theon. "You saved my life."

"You saved mine," said Theon hoarsely. "When you said what you said to Myranda, up at that wall, about wanting to die as yourself... It woke me up. Made me realize that... I'm going to die anyway. I'd rather die as Theon than Reek."

Sansa nodded. "Theon... Do you love Bran and Rickon?"

The word "yes" just barely slipped out of Theon's mouth as a whisper.

"Do you want to make up for what you've done?"

Silence. Sansa took this to mean "yes".

"Good," said Sansa. "Tomorrow, we'll start searching for my little brothers."


End file.
